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Saturday 27 July 2024
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Arthur C Clarke Award
This award has been given since 1987 for the best sf novel whose UK first edition was published during the previous calendar year, and consists of an inscribed bookend and a sum of money from a grant initially donated by Arthur C Clarke. In 2001 the prize money – until then a constant £1000 – was increased to £2001 as a gesture to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); it has since risen by ...
Mano, D Keith
(1942-2016) US actor, author and playwright whose energetic novels confronted Christians (he was himself a Russian Orthodox Christian) with various moral and physical dilemmas. His second novel, Horn (1969), is a transcendental fable; his third, War Is Heaven! (1970), describes with some surreal vividness a Future War in an imaginary – but easily imagined – South American country. The Bridge (1973) is a ...
Merrill, James
(1926-1995) US author and poet whose two novels are nonfantastic, as is most of his poetry, which is of the highest calibre, and justifies his ranking as one of the most important American poets of his century. He is of indirect but significant sf interest, and may be deemed a central figure of twentieth-century Fantastika, for The Changing Light at Sandover (omni 1982) [see Checklist for details of component parts], a sustained 17,000 line verse ...
Hulme-Beaman, Emeric
(1864-1937) Indian-born author, in UK from 1882 or earlier, one of nineteen children of the military surgeon Arden Hulme Beaman (1828-1915), several of whom were authors; he wrote at least four thrillers as by Ben Strong in collaboration with William Senior Ellis (1876-1940). The feats of the mysterious protagonist of his Ozmar sequence, Ozmar the Mystic (1896) and The Prince's Diamond (1898), reflect his long immersion in ...
ASFA
Initialism for the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, a nonprofit education association open to all those involved with sf and fantasy art in either a professional or an amateur capacity. ASFA promotes such work and its creators' rights in various ways, most conspicuously by presenting the Chesley Awards (which see), named for Chesley Bonestell and given annually since 1985. / Vincent ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...